Carex praecoxSchreb.

early sedge

WFO wfo-0000350207 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Carex praecox, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. a Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-07 / obs. 205794921
Carex praecox, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. b Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201706354
Carex praecox, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. c Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203567953
Carex praecox, photographed by Михаил Орлов
fig. d Михаил Орлов, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200075317
Carex praecox, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197877608
Carex praecox, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. f Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197308884
Carex praecox, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. g Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197056960
Carex praecox, photographed by Татьяна Максимова
fig. h Татьяна Максимова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195971959

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K002941432
Filed as
Carex praecox Schreb.
Det. by
Clarke, C.B.
Collected
S.coll.
Origin
not recorded
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 37 botanical countries

Regions where Carex praecox is native: Altay, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, West Siberia, Yakutiya, Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, Netherlands, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, South European Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayKazakhstanMongoliaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeTurkmenistanWest SiberiaYakutiyaAlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFinlandFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNetherlandsNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSouth European RussiaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Carex praecox, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
Netherlands NET
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Kazakhstan KAZ
Mongolia MON
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Turkmenistan TKM
West Siberia WSB
Yakutiya YAK

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 111 in flower of 137 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Carex praecox observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 111 of 137 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,000 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -18.1 °C -10.7 °C -3.3 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.5 °C 23.7 °C 26.5 °C
Annual rainfall 460 mm 614 mm 722 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 61 mm 103 mm 127 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,000 research-grade observations of Carex praecox that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 49 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Carex arenaria Dubois ex Steud.
  • Carex aristata Honck.
  • Carex brizoides subsp. brunnea Čelak.
  • Carex brizoides var. adrianopolitana Podp.
  • Carex brizoides var. brunnea Čelak.
  • Carex brizoides var. campestris Wimm.
  • Carex brizoides var. praecox (Schreb.) Fiori
  • Carex curvula Lam.
  • Carex heterophylla Krock.
  • Carex heterophylla Krock. ex Steud.
  • Carex montana Pollich ex Lightf.
  • Carex pilulifera Geners. ex Boott
  • Carex praeceps Borkh. ex Rchb.
  • Carex praecox f. gracilis Junge
  • Carex praecox f. gracillima (Asch.) Soó
  • Carex praecox f. laxa Kük.
  • Carex praecox f. monostachya Lackow.
  • Carex praecox f. nana (Zapał.) Soó
  • Carex praecox f. petermanii Soó
  • Carex praecox f. podolica (Zapał.) Soó
  • Carex praecox f. rumelica Velen.
  • Carex praecox subsp. schreberi O.Schwarz
  • Carex praecox subsp. velenovskyi (Domin) Jílek
  • Carex praecox var. alata Zlinska

and 25 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.